Street Sounds Inspire New Multimedia Book

Hari Kunzru's 'Twice Upon a Time' Combines Text, Images, Music and City Sounds

Hari Kunzru spent time navigating New York by sound rather than sight and collected his impressions in his new ebook "Twice Upon a Time: Listening to New York," which includes city sounds and music. Photo: Andrew Kelly for The Wall Street Journal

When Hari Kunzru moved to New York from London in 2008, he had trouble sleeping.

On hot summer nights, the sounds of sirens, traffic and arguments from a nearby stoop would waft in through the open window of his street-level East Village apartment. He found the omnipresent urban soundtrack oppressive.

Mr. Kunzru has since changed his tune. The 44-year-old author of four novels, including "Gods Without Men," has a new multimedia book, "Twice Upon a Time: Listening to New York," that was inspired by them.

"Learning to really listen to it and learning to kind of embrace it, rather than running away from it, was a very useful thing to do," Mr. Kunzru said from a bench in Tompkins Square Park, which he frequented when he lived on East 10th Street.

"Twice Upon a Time" combines text, images, music and city sounds and was released in May by Atavist Books. In addition to the full version, the publisher sells text-only editions for the Kindle and Nook.

ENLARGE

Ray's Candy Store on Avenue A in Manhattan, which is featured in the book.
Andrew Kelly for The Wall Street Journal

ENLARGE

Hari Kunzru, author of the multimedia book, 'Twice Upon a Time: Listening to New York,' in Thompkins Square Park.
Andrew Kelly for The Wall Street Journal

Part of what helped Mr. Kunzru learn to listen to the city was his discovery of Louis Hardin, aka Moondog, the blind poet, composer and musician who arrived in the city in 1943 and who for years performed, in Viking garb, on the Avenue of the Americas. Moondog developed a following and collaborated with the likes of Steve Reich and Philip Glass—Mr. Glass hosted him for a time in his home—before leaving New York for Germany in 1974. He died there in 1999.

Moondog's music, which often incorporated street sounds, helped Mr. Kunzru perceive his surroundings in a different way. "It intrigued me that he was blind, because I was having enough trouble negotiating the city as a sighted person," he said. "I thought, if I pay careful attention, then I can learn where I am in some sort of more profound way than knowing the difference between uptown and downtown."

In 2013, Mr. Kunzru returned to parts of town where he'd spent time in his first months, this time with binaural microphones in his ears, which amplified ambient sounds as he recorded them. He found that he was attuned to everything from birds in trees to street musicians in a new way.

In "Twice Upon a Time," he writes about performers in the subway, including an elderly singer in a velvet tuxedo and an Andean panpipe ensemble. But mariachi bands are his favorite.

"They invariably look crushingly bored," Mr. Kunzru writes. "Then they propel into a song, perfunctorily crunching into the silence of the carriage like a child biting into an apple." As readers turn the pages, the sounds of singing, guitar and accordion, as well as subway noise, start to play.

"I think normally we're really dominated by our visual sense," he said, "and if you kind of bump up your auditory sense, it suddenly becomes rich in a different way."

Frances Coady, Atavist Books's president, called herself a fan of Mr. Kunzru's and contacted his agent looking to work with him.

"He's very tech-savvy, and he's a great writer," Ms. Coady said. "It's a perfect marriage between the form and the content."

The publisher, founded by Ms. Coady, IAC/InterActiveCorp Chairman Barry Diller and the film and theater producer Scott Rudin, launched in March. Its first release was the digital-only novella "Sleep Donation" by Karen Russell, who previously wrote "Swamplandia," a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

Atavist Books uses the software of its partner company Atavist to publish its digital books, and the companies have minority equity interests in each other's businesses.

Mr. Kunzru now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and New York-born son, who he carried with him as he made his recordings. He is now at work on a novel about 78-record collecting and blues music, and while he doesn't plan on renouncing his British citizenship any time soon, he would opt for New York citizenship if he could.

"A lot of the things that I value are things that the city values as well," he said. "I value being in shared public spaces, I value it being a walking city. I value it being a city where people from all over the world come and decide to occupy space together. That's my idea of utopia, really."

ENLARGE

A 1953 image of the musician Moondog, who inspired Mr. Kunzru.
Associated Press

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.